Destiny Doud thought she had just 48 hours to be a mother.Like most of the hundreds of pregnant women who give birth while serving time each year, Doud was slated to give up her newborn to a relative just days after the baby was born last May.Doud recalled hugging Jaelynn close at the hospital, waiving off nurses' offers to take the girl to the nursery. She wanted every minute to hold her daughter ahead of that wrenching separation.But just before handing off the baby to her own father, Doud learned she had qualified for a radical alternative. She could raise Jaelynn behind bars.On June 2, 2017, Doud cradled her newborn as she passed through a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, through heavy steel doors to a cell outfitted with a crib. A sign on the door reads: "Doud: Y21214 Baby: Jaelynn."The Decatur Correctional Center is the only home the girl with wispy blonde hair and ice-blue eyes has known in her 11 months.Prison nursery programs remain rare nationwide, but eight … [Read more...] about This central Illinois prison is allowing mothers to raise their babies behind bars. But is the radical experiment a good idea?

By Theresa Walker | [email protected] | Orange County RegisterPUBLISHED: May 11, 2018 at 10:28 am | UPDATED: May 12, 2018 at 9:37 pm She is 18. A superstar voted Girl of the Year in her 2010 Bolsa Grande High graduating class for stellar academics and ceaseless community service. Her parents, immigrants who fled Vietnam in the 1970s after the war ended, have had to work long hours to support a family of eight — themselves, five daughters and a grandmother — on about $40,000 a year. With money tight, she goes to Golden West College, saving up from her job at a yogurt shop to transfer to a four-year college on the East Coast. She wants to become a pediatrician. Only, Jessica Dinh gets pregnant before she finishes that first year. She finds out a month before finals. Her boyfriend, who is leaving for Navy boot camp soon, wants her to get an abortion. They’ve been dating since senior year in high school and that’s the plan they had agreed on if she ever … [Read more...] about From a scared pregnant teen to a confident young woman, this mom’s future was shaped by someone like her

DECATUR, Ill. — Destiny Doud thought she had just 48 hours to be a mother.Like most of the hundreds of pregnant women who give birth while serving time each year, Doud was slated to give up her newborn to a relative just days after the baby was born last May.Doud recalled hugging Jaelynn close at the hospital, waiving off nurses’ offers to take the girl to the nursery. She wanted every minute to hold her daughter ahead of that wrenching separation.But just before handing off the baby to her own father, Doud learned she had qualified for a radical alternative. She could raise Jaelynn behind bars.On June 2, 2017, Doud cradled her newborn as she passed through a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, through heavy steel doors to a cell outfitted with a crib. A sign on the door reads: “Doud: Y21214 Baby: Jaelynn.”The Decatur Correctional Center is the only home the girl with wispy blonde hair and ice-blue eyes has known in her 11 months.Prison nursery … [Read more...] about Prisons are allowing mothers to raise their babies behind bars. But is the radical experiment in parenting and punishment a good idea?

Salvadorans in violence-racked San Vicente attend the July 2016 funeral of Antonio Mejia Guillermo Delgado, mayor of Tepetitan, who was killed by gang members. (Alex Peña/LatinContent/Getty Images) For 15 years, the girls lived parallel lives. Left behind in El Salvador by mothers bound for the United States, they grew up a few miles apart in San Vicente, entering adolescence just as the city sank into gang violence. They fled within weeks of one another, traveling north in 2014 along the same smuggling route before ending up in the Washington suburbs. It was there that Venus Romero Iraheta and Damaris Reyes Rivas finally met, after becoming entangled in the same violent street gang, MS-13. And it was there, in a wooded park in Springfield, Va., that Venus stabbed Damaris 13 times. Even amid a nationwide surge in MS-13 slayings, the 2017 killing stood out. Female victims are nothing new for MS-13, which is infamous in Central America for making young women choose between rape … [Read more...] about ‘Heinous and violent’: MS-13’s appeal to girls grows as gang becomes ‘Americanized’